The First One I Bring Back
by p.c. andrews
Summary: Bankotsu has the six jewel shards Naraku gave him in the grave to awaken his comrades.  Which one does he pick to revive first?  Oneshot.


_Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha or it's characters. I'm just using them in a pretty pointless story._

The First One I Bring Back

_"Awaken, Banktosu..." the strange voice called to him from beyond a misty void. "Awaken!" it insisted. The next thing Bankotsu knew, he was lying on the ground, opening a pair of eyes he hadn't looked through in...years. Above him stood a stranger, a man who appeared young, but Bankotsu knew immediately that this was a facade. He was in fact a demon, one who had aquired many peices of the legendary Shikon Jewel. How had it broken in peices?_

Eventually in a cascade, six of them fell to the graveyard soil floor, and the man watched as Bankotsu picked each one up. Bankotsu turned around and looked behind him, and there were heaps of bones. Each pile had been a life once. When he turned back around, the demon named Naraku was gone...

He pushed some of his long hair out of his eyes as he stared down at the six shards in his palm. Sure, Naraku _said_ that they would have the reward of eternal life if they served him. But how was he supposed to resurrect the six men who served under him? How was he supposed to start all over again? He scanned their grave. There was no sign of his _Baby._ Not only had those treacherous daimyos conspired to put them all down like rabid beasts, but they took his _Banryu!_

Yep. He needed help. He needed his brothers, his comrades-in-arms, his only real family. And, of all those brothers, there was one he needed more than any of the others. With a deep breath, Bankotsu began to crawl among the remains. Who was who? Had those bastards placed them carefully in their grave, or had they just tossed their unwanted cadavers into a ditch? How had Naraku managed to put _him_ together, if he was in the same shape the others were in? "Okay, Bankotsu, just keep yourself together. I've gotta find him..."

He crawled past someone's rib cage. Tentatively, Bankotsu touched it. Immediately, he had the answer to how Naraku had found all of Bankotsu's skeleton to reassemble; the image of the person the bones used to be immediately appeared in his mind. These bones were Renkotsu's. His second-in-command. It would make sense to awaken him first, but no. There was only one brother he could tolerate right this second.

Up ahead, there was another pile of bones, and now, it was getting a little easier for Bankotsu to determine, just on sight, who was who. A huge pile of bones could be none other that Kyukotsu, his giant. The smallest set of bones was obviously Mukotsu, his poison master. And the bones of Ginkotsu, his weapons expert, comingled with metal limbs and armor fused to his very skull. Which left only Suikotsu, whose claw-like gloves had been tossed into their shared grave with him, as though by burying them with him, they could bury their fear of him as well. This last skeleton, whose head was a few feet away from the rest of the corpse, had to be it.

"Jakotsu! Look what they've done to you!" Bankotsu growled as he contemplated actually picking up the skull and reattaching it to the skeleton. Again, he took a steadying breath, then took the skull, and the image of Jakotsu in life filled his mind. And, a hair pin dropped to the ground as well. Jakotsu's jade hair pin. Imagine, they left him with it. Again, trying to bury their fear along with the corpses. His sword, Jakotsuto, was also nearby. _Bury the mercenaries, bury the weapons, bury all memory of them!_ Except Banryu, no doubt taken as a trophy. Pushing all of these thoughts out of his mind, Bankotsu declared aloud, "I can do this! _I have to do this!"_

He placed the skull at the top of the headless spine. He took one of the Sacred Jewel shards and placed it on the very end of the spine, then brought the head closer to it. Like a magnet, the head and spine attached, and the magic began to work. Flesh began to grow back onto the bones, and Jakotsu's face emerged from the skull. His hair fell around his face. Bankotsu dared to look at the rest of him, and saw that everything seemed perfectly intact. Then he breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe this wasn't going to be so hard after all.

But, Jakotsu's eyes were still shut. Bankotsu checked for a pulse, but there wasn't one. _Oh, wait! I have to wake him up. But how?_ Then, he remembered what Naraku had done...

"Awaken, Jakotsu," Bankotsu said in his most serious, no-nonsense voice. There was no response whatsoever from the corpse. He breathed in, then out, and then repeatd, "Awaken, Jakotsu!" He watched for even the slightest breath, and even pressed his ear to Jakotsu's cold chest to listen for a heartbeat. But there was none. "Come on, Jakotsu, get the hell up. I need you!" Damn, Jakotsu had always been one of the worst when it came to waking him up. Why should it be any different now? In desperation, Bankotsu started shaking Jakotsu's shoulders.

At last, Bankotsu thought he heard Jakotsu groan ever so slightly. Bankotsu now held his own breath and waited silently for Jakotsu to revive. His eyelids opened very slightly, but then closed again. Jakotsu moved onto his side, into a semi-fetal position, and then appeared as if he was going back to sleep. Bankotsu gaped; he couldn't beleive it! "What the...Jakotsu!" Bankotsu gave Jakotsu a hard slap on his buttocks. "Jakotsu, get your lazy ass up! I need you!"

"OW!" Jakotsu protested, then opened his eyes. "Hey, I had a really lousy night's sleep!" Jakotsu said in a drowsy voice. "I was having bad dreams! I dreamt that I was beheaded, and then I was in some kind of mist, and then I heard you trying to wake me up."

"We all had that same nightmare. But we're all going to wake up from it, right now, with your help, Jakotsu," Bankotsu explained as gently as he could. Jakotsu's pretty face began to show the shock he was feeling as his dark eyes fell upon his brothers' remains scattered all around him.

"It was true! He...he beheaded me! And I remember they'd been beheaded too! I saw them! Oh, Bankotsu!" Jakotsu cried. "How? How are we alive again? Wait, we're the only ones, the rest all are still...dead? But, shouldn't you have gotten one of them up first? Like Renkotsu. He's the smart one, right? Or Suikotsu? He could've helped you put the...bodies back together! Where's my clothes? Oh, here's what I was wearing...but there's blood all over it!" he fretted. Indeed, there was the blood from his decapitation, and also the blood from his _hara-kiri,_ his self-inflicted suicide wound that he'd been made to do before he was beheaded.

For a moment, Bankotsu just watched Jakotsu dither and wail. _Perhaps I should have done some of that too,_ he thought sadly. _But now, I must be strong for him, so he can be strong for me!_ He gripped Jakotsu by his shaking shoulders. "Jakotsu, look at me!" The dark, nearly black eyes of Jakotsu met Bankotsu's deep blue ones. "There is no way that you would not have been the first one I bring back. I had to make sure that you would be here. If I couldn't bring you back, I would have just taken the shard out of my neck and went back to the eternal mist. But since you're here now, I know we can make a go of this. We've gotten a second chance at life!"

"Do you really think so? Do you think this time, things that we've tried to accomplish can get done?" Jakotsu asked while Bankotsu nodded in agreement. "Do you think I'll find my one true love this time? I had been so disappointed in the past. I wonder who he'll be?"

"You're not going to know unless you help me revive the rest of our brothers and set out on our new assignment!" Bankotsu told him.

"We've got a new assignment already? Who hired us from the grave?" Jakotsu asked in shock.

"Well, let's first get going with waking up the others. Then, we set out to kill Inuyasha," Bankotsu told him.

"Hmm...Inuyasha. Is he cute?" Jakotsu asked.

"Huh? How the hell do I know? Damn, you have a one track mind! You've been alive again, what, five minutes, and you're already thinking about men!" Bankotsu complained, though affectionately.

"Yes, and you _used_ to have a one track mind too. Are you still too dead yet? Bankotsu, wake up soon, please!" Jakotsu teased.

"Jakotsu, can't you be serious?" Bankotsu sighed.

"You know my deal, Big Brother. 'Serious is Bad.' And this isn't bad."

Bankotsu made no remark, but he already was feeling a little bit more hopeful. This was why he needed Jakotsu now, and always had, and always would.


End file.
